Max Puchalsky is an artist and organizer who explores the intersections of new media and social practice to prefigure egalitarian potentialities. He has collaborated with public libraries to curate special collections of radical texts (including zines, music, and games), transformed art galleries into public commons for utopian (re)creation, created iconic graphics for autonomous, working-class, LGBTQ+, and ecological organizations, and facilitated workshops for visionary storytelling at forest defense occupations.
Puchalsky has participated in over 60 exhibitions in 9 countries and his work has been featured in over 50 reviews and publications. He is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including the Future Art Award: Ecosystem X (2022), Liesl Blockstein Award (2021), Madison Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship (2021), Bascom Purchase Award (2019), and M List Award: Innovation in the Arts (2018).
His teaching experience includes the UW–Madison Art Department, the Institute for Social Ecology, Arts + Literature Laboratory, and the Bayview International Center for Education And The Arts.
Puchalsky is a founding member of the artist collective Solarpunk Surf Club and the Creative Director of Midwest Story Lab. His current research focuses on solidarity economics, liberatory technologies, and (more-than)human ethics through an ecology of forms, including tabletop role-playing, podcasting, and experimental filmmaking.
Puchalsky was born at 354.39 ppm on the isthmus called Madison. He holds an MFA in Studio Art (2020), MA in Studio Art (2019), BA in Music Performance (2013), and BA in Political Science (2013) from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and has studied at Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands.
He lives and works in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.